Rich_Winsor

I just picked up a Samsung 850 EVO SSD to install in my back up rig. As a rule I prefer to reinstall my software when I upgrade my hard drive, but since its only a backup rig I thought I might give Samsung's data migration utility a try. My question revolves around the fact that the drive I'm replacing is configured in a dual boot setup so I can run both Windows XP Pro and Windows 7 Ultimate. Does anybody have any first hand experience with such a migration? Will the utility handle such a situation?

I'm with Paul on this one. I was forced to go the hardware lock route because I use the program on desktop workstations in 2 locations. One has a blazing fast (65+Mbps) internet connection and the other has no internet access so the activate deactivate dance is useless to me. I think you should allow installation on 2 rigs (as many other software vendors do) and then if you want to do the activate/deactivate thing for any installations beyond the initial 2, fine and dandy.

The default sun angle is controlled in the "Adjust Lights" dbx.

Hind sight is always 20/20 but you should always get your driver updates from the respective vendor's web site and not from Window's Update or Device Manager.

Jess, If you want to learn more about reputation points, which is what those little red and green boxes are, check out this thread. https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/134-reputation-points/page-1?hl= reputation points

Now you are back to square one.

How do ya’ll deal with remembering all the valuable tips presented here on the forum on an almost daily basis. I know personally I used to just take note of them as I was reading them and then hope I could remember them or at least go back and re-read them when I had a need for the info. Of course that approach proved to be unreliable at best and unworkable the rest of the time. Between my feeble memory and the sketchiness of the search features I seldom could navigate back to the content I was looking for. Then in a moment of enlightenment, I stumbled upon a simple “no brainer” solution. I may be the last one to figure this out but all I did was to create a folder I call “Chief Forum Tips” and now whenever I come across a tip I want to remember I simply capture it using the Windows Snipping Tool, give it a name that is germane to the content, and save it to my Forum Tips folder. Now I have all the info together in an easily searchable location. I can just peruse the folder using the Windows Explorer preview panel to view the tips or I can use the Windows Search feature and I only have to search one folder instead of my whole hard drive or all of the internet. Another advantage of this system is that I have the info in MY POSSESSION so that in the event that the info is no longer available on the forum (as in the Old Forum going away) I still can have easy access to it. Anyhoo, you’ve probably already figured this out for yourselves but sometimes it can’t hurt to state the obvious.

I just did a similar roof for an as built duplex plan. In this case the ridge was a massive 4 x 16 beam running the length of the structure and the rafters are 4 x 6's on 48" centers. 2 x 6 tongue & groove for the roof/ceiling.

Larry, I noticed the change and was going to comment on it. I could never get your Jing vids to display the whole screen correctly. No longer the case as now everything is displaying peachy keen.

Very nice indeed Kjell. Pray tell, how big a file size does a video like that generate? I have a 6 1/2 minute walkthrough of a 2 acre site that I created solely with Chief software and that file is almost 400 MB.

Thanks Doug. Speaking of bike riding, now that you have warmed up with a cross country jaunt are you ready to tackle the highest peaks in Europe? http://www.hauteroute.org/

OK (sheepishly raising hand), I'll cop to it. With the overall tenor of the forum lately and all the sniveling about Chief's perceived lack of CAD tools I thought it would be fun to see what people's reactions would be. I wish I had thought of the SSA angle while I was trying to flesh out my phony article with some plausible sounding techno-babble. Could of had some real fun there. I was originally going to create an imaginary publication called "AutoCAD Weakly" but it was running late so I just borrowed a page from the CADALYST web site and edited it in PSP to suit my purposes. Hope y'all got a chuckle out of it.

Hi Laura, while I am no ray trace maven this topic has been bandied about on the forums quite a bit. If you use the search feature in the upper right hand corner it will lead you to quite a few threads. Be sure to change "this topic" to "forums". I entered " ray trace settings" and got numerous results. This is one of the better ones: https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/index.php?/topic/2803-raytrace-questions/?hl=+ray +trace +settings

Wow! This is the first that I have heard of this.

We have prepared an interim update to correct two important issues in X7. The update notes for 17.1.2.2 are attached. Attached Files chief-architect-17.1.2.2-update-notes.pdf

So.... what you are saying is that everything is "peachy". Sorry, couldn't resist that one.

Don't know D. Scott. Preferences says that it should be checking for updates daily. What has been holding me back from updating is that I am unsure of the procedure if one is using the hardware lock. I'm using X6 with the lock. If I upgrade to X7 will my X6 lock still work or are they going to ding me for another $60 for a X7 lock? Chief's product page shows different locks for the last 4 versions (X4-X5-X6-X7). Anybody know the procedure? Or do I need to get on the horn to Coeur d'Alene?

Dermot, while I can appreciate the cautionary note, all I am doing is editing the existing files and assigning different colors to the 400 (20 x 20) pixels that make up the X6 graphic icon file. There is no change in the name or path. I'm no expert so correct me if I'm wrong but I am pretty sure the software doesn't care what color the pixels are as long as there are the proper number of them and they are located where the software expects them to be. I did learn something that had never occurred to me before in that the color of the pixels apparently does affect the file size. For example a 20x20 pixel white square is 142 bytes while the same square in black has a file size of 131 bytes. Live and learn. Anyhoo, these files are so minuscule that a few bytes more or less would have an undetectable effect on system overhead. Now Mick on the other hand.... well who knows what he's up to?

That's kind of odd. I have the exact opposite problem. I haven't upgraded to X7 yet and was wondering why I don't get the message saying that there is a newer version of the software available and would I like to download it now.

I think this is another case where what you get is "hosed". BTW, I speak from experience here. I originally built my workstation with a Quadro 4000 video card because at the time it was one of the preferred cards for running SolidWorks. After I started using Chief all everybody was talking about were NVidia gaming cards. For a long time I pooh-poohed the notion that the NVidia cards were that much better than my Quadro until Doug posted the website with the benchmark information. After I upgraded my card to the GTX 780 Ti I was blown away by the improved performance in Chief. And the real kicker is that I haven't noticed any appreciable difference in how SolidWorks performs, granted I am only using a small percentage of that software's capabilities.

128 x 128

Here you go Mick. Here are a handful of icons I created for X6 to replace ones I found to be less than intuitive. 1) Mouse-Orbit Camera - I overlaid the sphere icon with CA's original mouse-orbit camera icon and added a little color to the background to make it more visible. 2) Save - I replaced the hackneyed 3 1/2" floppy icon with a simple "S". 3) Library Browser - I never could find those little books on a shelf so I replaced them with highly visible letters. 4) Record Walkthrough - What a brown circle had to do with recording walkthroughs I'll never know so I made what for me is a more intuitive icon. 5) Project Browser - Ditto the Library Browser above. 6) Straight Stairs - Just added some color to Chief's transparent background to make it easier to find. I guess I really need to get on with upgrading to X7. Compared to the 20 x 20 pixel format of X6, X7's 128 x 128 format will be like night and day. Heck with 128 x 128 I can make the Mona Lisa.

JJ, I see that Mick has pretty much picked up the ball and run with it but the process is easy. Using the image editing software of your choice navigate to the "buttons" (what Chief calls them) folder. Most likely it will be: C:\Program Files\Chief Architect\Chief Architect Premier\resources\buttons and then open the Icon you want to change. Creating icons is a mini art form in and of itself (get it? mini art form ). Talk about a minimalist canvas, X6 gives you 20 x 20 pixels to work with. Although I haven't downloaded it yet I guess that has been increased to 128 x 128 pixels for X7. You can do anything you want from here. You can copy and paste content or you can draw it from scratch pixel by pixel. Once you have what you want just save it to the "buttons" folder and the next time you open chief you will see your revised icon. Be advised it's probably a good idea to save the original to another location so that you can go back to the default icons if you wish to later. Also be advised that there are lots of icons in the buttons folder and it might take some searching to find the one you want. If you aren't sure if you have the correct icon you can edit it and then check to see if the icon you wanted to change has in fact changed. Remember that you will have to close Chief and then restart it every time you change an icon for the changes to take effect. Here are a couple of other icons I have changed to make them more recognizable (the Library Browser and the Mouse Orbit Camera icons).

You guys do know that you can edit the icons to look like whatever you want them to. They are just .PNG files. You can edit them in Photoshop or PSP or even in Paint. Here I spiced up the background of the Stair Icon as an example.